Founding Father
by alcimines
Summary: A man who might - or might not - be much more than he appears seeks out the stacks of those who died in the Fall. What he finds in on a station orbiting the Earth is, to say the least, shocking. Note that this story was inspired by a particular work of art. It's "George Warshington" (not a misspelling) by a fellow who goes by SharpWriter on the Deviantart website.


FOUNDING FATHER

 _By the sheerest luck, I was off-world when our Earth died._

 _Exactly why it happened is still unclear. Or, at least, it is to me. However, the cause was obvious. Our most advanced artificial intelligences ran amok. And then, like something from the pen of Mary Shelley, berserk AI's and their servants roamed our world - killing mercilessly._

 _Mankind had actually managed to create something more deadly than ourselves. Ninety percent of the human race died in a matter of weeks._

 _The hellish entities that killed so many of us are called TITANs. There is, of course, an acronym involved in the name, but the details are unimportant._

 _I would like to say that we eventually defeated the TITANS, but that is not the case. Instead, they simply... stopped. Stopped and vanished. But by then their work was done. Earth was a dead planet, scorched by massive weapons, plagued by the abandoned creations that the TITANS left scattered in their wake, and littered with corpses that have since become scattered bones._

 _Humanity - or Transhumanity as some call it - abandoned our homeworld and fled in the reaches of space. However, even that isn't enough. Some of our new demons have followed us._

 _All of that is what we survivors call the Fall._

* * *

Jesse was born a man, but now inhabits the morph of a female Fury. Fury's are strongly handsome, but they are created for modern combat and as a result are immensely powerful and sturdy.

Jesse's Fury has pale white skin with coal-dark hair and gray eyes. There is a small globe and anchor tattoo just below her right eye - the only cosmetic effect I've ever seen her allow herself. Her form is actually quite striking, but it is my understanding that Jesse retains her original taste for female companionship.

Jesse and I have accomplished much together. She has a great many contacts in places both high and low, and often comes to me with interesting and useful information. She has been a faithful friend. And while I appreciate the loyalty she has shown me, I do feel that at least some of it is unwarranted. She has a grandiose idea of my actual station in life.

"Sir," Jesse began - she's always very formal with me. "I think I've found something important."

I was in my sparse quarters in Tranquility Base. The nature of their home has made Lunars into a rather austere people. There was simply no choice in the matter.

I had no idea where Jesse was located. She was tele-visiting as a holographic image. However, since there was no noticeable communication lag, she must have been either on Luna or in near orbit.

"What is it?" I asked.

With a thought, Jesse made a file available to my home mesh system. My muse examined it and pronounced the file to be safe and secure. I allowed my projector to display it.

A three-dimensional video of a slowly spinning tin-can habitat appeared in mid-air. The habitat was a very old design. The blue and white of Earth - still serenely beautiful despite the devastation wrecked upon her - was the video's backdrop. A sidebar showed a set of graphics and numbers that provided additional information. My muse translated the data for me.

"That's a dangerously low orbit," I commented thoughtfully. "Any lower, and the killsats would have destroyed the habitat. And anything that low is very likely to be contaminated by TITAN remnants."

"Yes, sir," Jesse agreed with a nod of her head.

I looked back at Jesse. "Why are you showing me this?"

Jesse made a gesture and the view zoomed in on the habitat. I could now see a shuttle attached to the habitat's docking collar. I recognized it as a once-popular European design, that was now slightly out-of-date. There was scattered damage across the shuttle's fuselage and along one wing. A registry number was clearly visible on the nose and tail.

Jesse continued with quiet precision. "This video was shot by a reconnaissance drone. The drone was surveying the debris just above the quarantine orbit. This habitat is listed in the orbital registry as 'Statione Vulcan'. It was built over a century ago as a cooperative project by the Italian government and several corporations. Originally, it was intended for researching specialized forms of micro-grav manufacturing. The project eventually came to a close and the station was repurposed. In the decades after, it changed hands several times. At the time of the Fall, the station was listed as the property of something called the Naples League."

"Information on the Naples League is spotty. They appear to have been a biocon group that wanted to leave Earth and live on their own terms. Their politics, at least publicly, weren't particularly extreme - just isolationist. The key backers of the Naples League were a group of European financiers and businessmen with connections to the Catholic church. The habitat was apparently going to be used as a staging facility for establishing a deep-space habitat in the asteroid belt. Thanks to the Fall, they never had the chance."

I shrugged. "Just another obsolescent station, hosting people with a dream. Perhaps an impractical dream."

"Yes, sir," Jesse agreed. "Communication with Statione Vulcan was lost late in the Fall. It issued no reports of being attacked or of suspicious equipment failures. They simply went offline and were never heard from again. Since the station is just above the quarantine orbit, and is too old to be of much value, there was apparently no attempt at rescue or salvage."

And the people inhabiting the station were simply forgotten and abandoned. That happened all too often during the chaos of the Fall.

"What about the shuttle?" I asked.

Jesse smiled at me. "The shuttle is what makes this interesting."

A video of the habitat vanished. In its place, a still image of a neatly dressed and bearded man appeared. The picture had the look of being from a social event, but the man in the photograph managed to project an ascetically severe and perhaps self-righteous attitude. A lifescan window accompanied the photo. The individual in question was in a healthy Observer morph, with some high-quality after-market augments for data collection and recording.

"His name's Abelard Larsen," Jesse continued. "He was a Danish journo-blogger who vanished during the Fall. Larsen specialized in military-technological issues, and the biggest story he ever broke was about an experimental EU anti-nanoswarm defense system. Larsen claimed that the system - called 'Project Archangel' - was being rushed into use without adequate safeguards and testing. As a result, the Archangel project was delayed and never entered service. During the Fall, all detailed knowledge concerning Archangel was supposedly lost."

"Let me guess..." I said slowly.

Jesse nodded. "Larsen boarded one of the last shuttles to lift off from Brussels. Before he left, he sent messages to some of his off-world supporters and contacts claming that he had the technical data for Archangel. He apparently intended to use that to buy a position off-world. However, his shuttle was never heard from again. At the time, it was presumed lost to TITAN interceptors."

"But the shuttle actually made it to Statione Vulcan," I said thoughtfully. "That probably wasn't the original destination, but the shuttle took some damage during its escape and had to dock somewhere as soon as it reached orbit."

Jesse nodded again. "It would seem so, sir."

"Was Larsen really carrying useful information about Archangel? Or was that just a tale to buy his safety?"

Jesse just shrugged. "We don't know for sure, but if he was telling the truth, then what he's carrying is all that survives of Archangel."

Every now and then, Jesse slips. Who was the 'we' she mentioned? I didn't know and I had never pursued the matter.

"What do your sources say about Archangel?"

"It was supposed to be incredibly advanced. The European Union military was certainly very excited about it. I've talked to experts who think it would have delayed the TITANs significantly if it had been deployed. It would be pretty useful even today."

"Any idea how many people were aboard Statione Vulcan?" I added.

Jesse shrugged again. "The Naples League wasn't a communicative bunch. Perhaps a hundred station personnel. And up to a dozen more from the shuttle."

The chances that any of them remained alive were, of course, nil.

But...

"I'll investigate," I told Jesse.

* * *

 _Perhaps there are survivors scattered here and there on Earth. After all, the Fall was only ten years ago, and human beings are devious and resourceful creatures. But the powers now ruling the inner system have decreed that Earth is to be quarantined, lest monsters arise from its corrupted depths and kill the last of us. That command is enforced by a legion of killer satellites that orbit the Earth and destroy anything trying to leave - or land._

 _As I suggested, I have my doubts about the accepted story. Oh, there is no question about the rise of electronical and mechanical monsters, but I do wonder if the tale we are told about their origin is complete._

 _At the time of the Fall, I had the honor to be serving in the United States government. I was visiting Tranquility Base - a small colony near the landing site of the famous Apollo 11 mission. America had little interest in Lunar affairs, but Tranquility Base was an exception since it was filled with American citizens. And since a major anniversary of the first Lunar landing was coming, the personal presence of a government dignitary was required._

 _As the situation on Earth began going to hell, I received orders to remain on Luna. The goal was to have at least one individual who was in the Presidential order of succession safely isolated._

 _I went to the Moon because I lost a coin-toss with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development._

 _That was what saved me._

* * *

After I ceased communicating with Jesse, I reviewed the information she'd left with me. Then I had Martha examine it as well.

"I don't like it," Martha told me once she was done. "That station is almost surely TITAN-contaminated."

India invested heavily in Lunar colonization and Martha is descended from those settlers. Her English has a distinctive sub-continental accent.

As I said, our quarters are small. Jesse and I had met in the largest room - a combined living room, dining room, and kitchen that was a luxurious five meters by five meters in size. Our bedroom contained a bed, a closet, and not much else. The bed was originally designed for just one person, but Martha and I didn't mind the closeness. Not that we really had much choice if we wanted to live together.

Martha works as a repair and maintenance technician in a local mining facility. She's over-qualified for the job, but once wryly told me that she was only given two choices: servicing machines, or servicing those who serviced the machines.

Martha tends to pad around our quarters in the nude. Whenever we have guests, virtual or otherwise, she stays in the bedroom. At the moment, she was sitting cross-legged on our bed, the file Jesse had sent open in a projector image before her. Her morph is that of a common worker pod; cool cybernetic steel, warm pod flesh, and seams on every joint. Her face is blandly plastic-pretty, her skin midnight black, and her hair a bright blue and orange mop. I'm really not sure what effect the manufacturer was going for.

"I don't like the looks of it either," I conceded.

"Whoever Jesse is working with doesn't want to risk their own resources to investigate the station," Martha told me irritably. "So they're trying to rope you into it."

I nodded in reluctant agreement.

"One of these days, Jesse and her friends are going to get you killed," Martha said disgustedly.

"And then I'll come back."

Martha gave me a long look. "I like you the way you are now."

* * *

 _After the Fall, I stayed on Luna - there wasn't much choice. I collected some emergency resources that were hidden away in a CIA cache and used them to start a modest surveying and salvage business. That business was part-real and part-cover._

 _Then I began saving dead people._

 _One of the wonders of our time is the cortical stack - a small device embedded in the body, where the spine meets the skull. It keeps an ongoing record of a person's memories and personality. When the possessor dies, the stack can be retrieved. Then the recorded mind can be given a new body._

 _There is many a corpse with an unrecovered stack scattered throughout our solar system, but many are recovered every year. Add into that the vast number of minds - egos as they're called - that during the Fall were converted into digital form and broadcast to anywhere that would accept them, and suddenly there was nowhere near enough bodies for all of those orphaned minds. The effort to catch-up with the backlog is slow and full of terrible inequity, but it is happening._

 _Doing what I can to recover the lost is the task I have set for myself. They deserve a chance for something better._

* * *

Martha helped me with the mission details. Then she assembled my gear and double-checked its functionality. There was no question of her coming with me. After all, she has a job. And it would be a bad idea to place us in a situation where both of our bodies might be destroyed. I depended on Martha to make sure that nothing untoward happened if I died and had to be resleeved.

* * *

 _I don't particularly like the phrase, but I suppose you could say that Martha is my woman. She's certainly not my wife. She isn't ready for that, and perhaps she never will be._

 _Originally, Martha was an inhabitant of the Lunar city of New Mumbai. She just barely escaped the monstrous contamination of her home city - and its subsequent incineration by the hypercorps powers-that-be. Once she realized that something was going horribly wrong, Martha stole a mining tractor and fled New Mumbai just as fast as its tracks could carry her._

 _Yes, Martha escaped from New Mumbai, but she didn't survive its destruction._

 _Back then, Martha had a Splicer morph and a name more traditional to her lineage. Both died in that tractor. The vehicle was crippled by debris flung high and wide from the nuclear destruction of New Mumbai. Trapped inside, Martha waited vainly for rescue, but eventually ran out of atmosphere._

 _A few years later, I found Martha's body and extracted her cortical stack._

 _A year after that, a worker pod appeared at my door and thanked me for rescuing her. It was, of course, Martha. She'd indentured herself to a hypercorps in exchange for a body. At the time, angered by her forced relationship with her employers, she was identifying herself by her pod's production id number instead of her birth name._

 _She and I kept in touch. And one thing led to another._

 _Our social moments together were almost the first normal human contact I'd had since the Fall. I was the only person she'd been intimate with since her death. Within a month, she'd moved into my quarters. I offered to pay off her indenture contract and get her a better morph, but she declined. Martha has a strong sense of independence - that's part of the reason I'm so attracted to her._

 _Martha has nightmares, but claims she doesn't remember the details. She's always frantically gasping for breath when she wakes._

 _She never uses her birth name. The decision to take the name she currently uses was hers._

* * *

My survey ship is called the "Liberty Belle". It was originally an orbit-to-orbit courier vessel, but I've modified it for my purposes. It can make the journey from the Lunar surface to Earth orbit and back again without a problem, but it doesn't have the cargo capacity for a longer voyage.

The nose-art of the "Liberty Belle" is of scantily-clad woman, her blonde hair constrained by a bandanna in the colors of the American flag, crooking a finger invitingly at the observer. As art-work goes, I suppose it's a bit undignified, but the previous owner warned me that it was a good-luck charm that had served him well for many decades. That was superstition, but I chose to respect it.

"Welcome aboard, captain," the co-pilot program told me as I buckled in. It was the same program that had been installed into the vessel when I purchased it. Heavily modified from the original code by divers hands, it was startlingly efficient and I didn't think replacing it would be wise.

"Hello, Belle," I responded. "It's good to be with you again. How are you doing today?"

"I dream of the day that the state finally withers away and we live in a true socialist utopia!" Belle announced forcefully. "Death to the fascist oppressors!"

Admittedly, the program has some quirks.

"At the moment, traditional government is definitely an endangered concept" I assured her. "However, socialism is facing an economic crisis that makes serious implementation currently questionable. It seems that capitalism and socialism are intertwined."

"So you keep telling me, captain. Now... fuck me, baby. Fuck me hard! Fuck me like I'm some nasty slut of a New York banker!"

I networked a not-completely accurate flight-plan into Belle's memory.

"Ooooh," Belle moaned in sultry response. "That was soooo good, daddy!"

Yes, Belle has her quirks.

"Initiate pre-flight checklist," I ordered.

"Yes, captain," Belle replied, suddenly very business-like. A display screen went active. We ran through the checklist without any further colorful commentary. There are some things that Belle takes very seriously.

Eventually, I requested clearance to lift off. Ground-space control responded quickly. Tranquility Base doesn't see a lot of traffic.

"Roger, Liberty Belle, you are cleared to launch. Have a good trip, Mr. President!"

As always, it was on the tip of my tongue to tell Tranquility Base not to grant me that title. But then I stopped myself. There was no point. And more than a few of the former-Americans in Tranquility Base seem to take comfort, or perhaps amusement, from that particular pretense.

"See you in a few days, Tranquility!" Belle chimed in cheerfully.

"Be a good girl, Belle," Tranquility Base replied affectionately. "Take good care of the boss."

"Are you kidding, Tranquility? I love it when he's deep inside of me!"

Belle and I lifted off from Tranquility Base, accelerating upward at about a quarter-G on Belle's hydrogen thrusters.

* * *

 _Yes, according to the order of succession in the Constitution, I am technically the President of the United States. However, the United States no longer exists._

 _But my situation is even more complex than that._

 _There is a relatively rare kind of morph called an 'heirloom'. In a rather ghoulish process - sometimes literally - DNA is recovered from a historical figure or their descendants, and then a more-or-less accurate facsimile of the original person is created. The price of such a morph is often relative to its degree of accuracy._

 _In my case, I was born and raised as an heirloom. I was never sleeved into my body. In fact, it's the only body I've ever known._

 _I was created as a publicity stunt by a biotech firm whose director had a strong interest in history. You could say I had a confused childhood, but I actually have few complaints. The people who raised me were caring. I wanted for nothing essential, was given an extremely advantageous education, and there was no silly pretense of 'owning' me. I said goodbye when I reached my majority. My farewell party featured more than a few heartfelt tears on both sides._

 _Only a single person from my design team has survived the Fall. He ended up on Mars as an infugee - a person whose ego was converted to digital format and then broadcast to safety. Like Martha, he found a body by indenturing himself to a hypercorps. He actually received a quite generous contract because of his cutting-edge experience with biotechnology, but I still didn't hesitate to buy off his indenture contract. After all, he was the person who taught me how to play baseball._

 _He and I have kept in touch over the years, and we've discussed my creation. More than a few heirloom morphs are nothing more than cosmetic surgery layered onto a body with just a trace of the original DNA - or no trace or all if the seller is sufficiently unscrupulous. However, the last survivor of those who created me was quite definite that they'd done the most complete job possible._

 _At least physically, I'm as good a copy of George Washington as modern science can manage. After I left the Army and made the decision to get into administration and politics, that was actually rather handy. The world had become a very unsure place and people wanted something from the past that reminded them of better days._

 _Whether or not those 'better days' were real or imagined is another question._

* * *

A day later, I found myself gazing at Statione Vulcan through Belle's view-screen. Nothing was appreciably different from what Jesse had shown me two days earlier.

I spent another half-day using passive sensors to try and detect if the station or the attached shuttle had any anti-ship defenses. There seemed to be nothing.

According to the sensor-sweep, the shuttle was an immobile wreck. Frankly, I wasn't sure how it managed to make it to the station.

"I still don't like it," Belle warned me. "I can almost smell the fascism."

I nodded unnecessarily. "Deploy Lafayette."

There was a pop and a thunk. A light on the command console flicked to green life. Meanwhile, a secondary screen went active and showed a wheeling exterior view of Belle, Earth, the station, and star-dotted space.

Through the main screen, I could see Lafayette powering his way towards the habitat. The drone has a bald eagle form and his wings flared dramatically - and uselessly - as his thrusters did the real work. Lafayette is as much a work of art as he is a tool. He was a gift from a group of United States Air Force veterans who apparently have a pretty strong suspicion of what I actually do on my 'survey and salvage trips'.

Using a key-controller, I vectored Lafayette towards an airlock that was located about midway along the length of the habitat - very near the habitat's command center. Within minutes, Lafayette's claws engaged a pair of grips built into the hull. Then his sensors began assessing the key-code lock. In my mind's eye, I could almost see his eyes flaring laser-red.

The lock's technical specs displayed on yet another screen. Unsurprisingly, it was decades out of date, and wasn't really intended for high-security. Lafayette deployed a tool-tendril and cracked it within a matter of seconds. The airlock cycled open.

"Be careful, captain," Belle said as I pulled my helmet over my head. As much as anything about Belle is real, I could hear the tense sincerity in her words.

"I'll do my best," I promised as I slung a diamond-edged axe over my shoulder.

After double-checking the feed on my rail-machinegun, I exited Belle and flew towards the station via hand-thruster.

* * *

 _I haunt places destroyed by the TITANS or their weapons, recovering the stacks of the dead. Stack recovery isn't actually illegal, but wandering through environments contaminated by the TITANS is definitely illegal and too many treasure-hunting fools find their doom that way. Even worse are the ones who survive, but unwittingly bring some TITAN-born monstrosity back to civilization._

 _Death-dealing machines, subverted morphs, and nanoswarms are bad enough, but that doesn't even begin to plumb the depths of what the Fall inflicted upon us. What most people know of the thing called the exsurgent virus is woefully incomplete. And perhaps that's for the best. We have enough nightmares._

 _Since I've taken up my lonely career, I've seen horrors that dance along the intersection of science, unreality, and madness._

* * *

Once Lafayette and I climbed through the airlock, my helmet sensors informed me that the habitat interior still had a breathable atmosphere. The habitat also had power, although the lights were disabled. Not being a damn fool, I didn't take off my armor. Likewise, there was no reason to turn on the lights. Both Lafayette and I have sufficient built-in sensors to make ordinary illumination superfluous.

The spin of the habitat gave us a reasonable level of gravity.

My nanodetectors showed no sign of a nanoswarm presence.

If the habitat operations program was still running - and odds were it was since we had atmosphere and power - then it knew the station had visitors. Of course, whatever had dealt with the inhabitants of the station wasn't necessarily consulting that program.

As we waited for some kind of immediate response, I jammed the outer airlock door open and rigged an explosive charge on the inner door. I might need to leave in a great hurry, and waiting for the airlock to cycle could very well be the death of me.

Meanwhile, Lafayette - who was faithfully keeping himself between me and the depths of the habitat - deployed a microbot swarm that began working its way towards the control center.

Almost immediately, they detected movement.

* * *

 _I almost died a dozen-and-more times as I explored habitats, stations, ships, and vehicles all the way from the Lunar surface to Earth orbit. That region was densely populated before the Fall. The wrecked hulks of a once vibrant past were an all too common sight._

 _The dead are even more common._

* * *

The microbots quickly made contact and sent back a report.

A half-dozen security pods were approaching us. Before the Fall, their kind had been employed by most of Earth's major militaries as light infantry. Unfortunately, their simple AI systems were an easy target for TITAN infiltration. As a result, large elements of our armies found new masters within seconds after being deployed against the TITANs. Then they unhesitatingly began slaughtering their fellow soldiers - and eventually the civilians they were supposed to be defending.

Lafayette was in the corridor ahead of me. He can use hooks and magnetic extensions on his wings to augment his claws when he moves through a structure. The effect is disturbingly like a spider.

Meanwhile, the microbots tagged a position midway between the pods as a target and jetted back towards us.

The lead security pod spotted us and opened fire. A burst from its assault rifle rattled down the corridor. Rounds bounced off of Lafayette's armored hide. The sensor network consisting of myself, Lafayette, and the microbots was superior to the manufactured-by-the-lowest-bidder sensors of the security pods. They were firing semi-blindly, while we had a very accurate view of them.

At my command, Lafayette responded by punching a three-round burst of homing grenades down the corridor. The corridor rocked as smoke and overpressure washed over us. Then Lafayette flattened against a bulkhead as the rotary cylinder of my rail-machinegun began to spin.

I opened fire.

* * *

 _Other explorers and salvagers, many of them vicious criminals, were a common encounter as I wandered through the wreckage of a civilization. Some I befriended, others I fought bitterly._

 _And all too often, I've encountered the killer remnants of the TITANs. Or nigh-indescribable things left behind by some variant of the exsurgent virus. You don't defeat those things._

 _You survive them._

* * *

The security pods were dead. Well... 'destroyed' was a better word. In the process, Lafayette and I had done some damage to the climb-way that led down to the control center. The security pods had apparently been guarding the control center. They'd detected our presence and advanced toward us - neglecting to close the control center's bulk door behind them. Some shrapnel from Lafayette's grenades had found its way inside.

Actually, that could have been worse. If we'd been forced to engage the security pods in the actual control center, the damage would have been massive.

A few desiccated morphs were scattered about the command center, obviously dead since the Fall. They were a mix of splicers and space-adapted bouncers.

As Lafayette watched my back, I pulled out a knife. I intended to extract the stacks from the skulls of the command crew. It was the same knife that I'd used to recover Martha. It has become something of a lucky charm for me.

However, the stacks were already missing from the dead.

They had been removed from the corpses with great precision. There were no indications of wasted motion or effort. I had the impression of a bladed tool that was thrust just below the base of the skull, clamped shut, and then yanked away - scooping out its prize. The removal was so accurate as to be inhuman.

* * *

 _The first time I found stackless dead, it turned out that soul-thieves - the slavers of the modern world - were also combing the same wrecked research vessel that I was investigating. They were searching for useful egos._

 _Of all the slavers, a cartel called Nine Lives is the worst. And it was with agents of Nine Lives that I fought a deadly battle throughout the wreckage of that gutted ship. After the battle, I extracted the stacks of the slavers and unhesitantly destroyed them._

 _But this wasn't soul-thieves. Or at least, it wasn't human soul-thieves..._

 _During the Fall, there was a clear pattern of TITANs collecting both heads and stacks. They deployed a variety of deadly harvester machines equipped with cutting tools. The most well-known model was armed with circular saw-blades and took entire heads. The brains of the decapitated were then forcibly uploaded and farcasted to unknown locations._

 _Likewise, we have found huge collections of discarded cortical stacks. They are empty, burned out, and half-melted. Again, they were hooked up to powerful broadcasting devices._

 _We don't know why the TITANs were so interested in collecting egos. We have no idea where those egos were sent. It's possible that they are still in transit, being transmitted at the speed of light to locations light-years distant._

* * *

The station's control center had a rather primitive internal surveillance system and very little of it was functional. However, the control system was intact. The interface was ridiculously outmoded, consisting of nothing more than monitor screens and control panels. I was astounded that it had never been upgraded.

Only one reading was unusual. The ancient fission power plant at the base of the station was emitting more heat than it should. But the plant wasn't malfunctioning. The power room was just hot.

Nothing else seemed to be out of order - except, of course, that a certain airlock had an outer door jammed open.

Lafayette was hanging bat-like from the ceiling, his claws gripping some protruding pipes. That position was, to say the least, very unlike an eagle. I reached up and stroked his armored beak. He leaned forward and rubbed the side of his head against my gauntlet.

"The natural thing to do is to work our way through the station and see what's going on in the power section."

Lafayette didn't respond, but he did gently nudge me again with his beak. He wanted more attention.

"Let's do it differently," I told Lafayette.

* * *

 _There is an ancient vid where the executive officer of a rather unlikely deep-space warship observes that an inexperienced opponent has a bias towards two-dimensional thinking._

 _Likewise, there are those who would not consider using the seemingly dangerous route of space to approach another location in a habitat. Instead, they would prefer to keep inside. After all, the habitat interior has atmosphere, gravity, temperature-control, and other amenities that give the illusion of safety._

 _There was a time when I would have made that kind of mistake, but I've since learned better._

* * *

Lafayette and I left the station via the same airlock by which we'd entered. Then Lafayette towed me down the length of the station, using his low-signature thrusters. Through my helmet's vision-enhanced faceplate, I could see Belle off in the distance. She was patiently station-keeping at a hopefully safe distance. I waved at her. She responded with a partial waggle. We were both operating under radio silence, so there was no further communication.

Part way, I paused at a large view-port.

There was a large room inside, probably some sort of recreation center. The novelty of 'standing' on a floor that looked 'down' into space is no longer the thrill it once was, but such chambers are not unknown in older orbital habitats.

The window was covered by what looked like some kind of reddish curtain. However, there were gaps, and I eventually managed to find one that was big enough to allow me to peer inside.

I immediately wished I hadn't.

The floor, ceiling, walls, and furniture of the room were covered with a layer of red and purple flesh. Internal organs that were no longer internal pulsed and moved sluggishly on their connecting viscera, like vaguely ambulatory grapes on a vine. Puddles of bodily fluids seemed to vibrate to some kind of rhythm. Tentacle-like structures slowly waved and drifted in the air.

But that was not the worst. Flattened and distorted faces were visible in the mat of flesh, their mouths gaping open in screams that I couldn't hear.

I immediately looked away. No amount of advanced technology will ever make it safe to vomit in your space-suit.

Rapping twice on Lafayette's back was the signal to keep going. We did so.

* * *

 _That thing is called a 'flesh-party'. And, believe it or not, it's not the worst that can happen to those taken by the exsurgent virus._

* * *

We made it to the power plant.

"Hello? [click] Come [click] in, please. This [click] is Statione [click] Vulcan [click]. Please [click] come [click] in," my radio suddenly whispered.

The clicking sound was an indication that my my info-defensive systems were do their job. They would interfere with any attempt to transmit hostile mind-hack information.

I cocked my head and listened.

"We know [click] you're out there. We're [click] patched into an [click] external camera. We can [click] see [click] you on the station [click] exterior. Don't [click] come inside! There [click] are things [click] on [click] the other decks! We had to seal [click] ourselves [click] of from the rest of the [click] station."

At my command, my muse begin a voice analysis program.

"My name is Gerard [click] Vauban," the voice - it was male - continued. "There [click] are [click] two others with [click] me - Nidhi Mastagne [click] and Emiliana Xing. We've [click] been trapped [click] in the lower [click] part [click] of the station for [click] years! Thank God [click] you've come!"

I listened carefully. There was a woman sobbing in the background. I thought I heard another woman's voice, perhaps trying to comfort the crying woman.

"Look... if you can [click] hear, please [click] respond," the man's voice pleaded. "Can you [click] signal your [click] ship's position? We can get [click] to a maintenance [click] drone [click] that still has [click] a little [click] fuel. We have [click] suits. If we can [click] get to your [click] ship, we can escape! Please! Please [click] help!"

The verdict of the pattern-matching program was swift. The message was composed of not-quite matching verbal scraps that had been concatenated together. There was an occasional and inhuman gap - almost indiscernible even to a computer - in the stream of words.

I cut the radio connection. The message wasn't from a real human being. Gerard Vauban, Emily Xing, and Nidhi Mastagne were long dead - if they had ever existed at all.

Using a signal-laser, I indicated to Belle that she should use her fine-maneuvar thrusters to creep further back from the station. She complied, but you could almost see her reluctance.

* * *

 _Using our better natures against us is a trick that our enemies adopted very quickly. They are not only killing us, but they are also killing that which makes us human. They do that by destroying any sense of trust and altruism we might possess._

 _More than once, I've wondered if the machines see destroying the human soul as simply another way of finally eliminating us._

* * *

The power plant section was in zero-g. Lafayette opened the airlock easily. Then he deployed a microbot and I used the exterior manual controls to cycle it through the airlock.

I connected an audio-feed link to the hull next to the airlock. After a pause, the microbot used the hull to conduct a message to me. It was compressed, but my muse provided a translation.

The microbot reported no signs of activity or environmental contamination. However, the internal temperature was about three degrees above that of the rest of the station.

In other words, roughly the same report I'd received from the control center.

"Identify yourself," something from inside the station said to me. The tone seemed mechanical, but that meant nothing.

For a long moment, I considered my options. Then I put an additional dozen layers of software cutoffs and anti-hacking nets between myself and whatever was trying to talk to me.

"My name is George Abraham Sullivan," I replied. A cutout took my words, translated them into emotionless tones formed from a library of syllable fragments and sent them on.

* * *

 _Damirez Elena Sullivan was the womb-donor who carried me to birth. After I was born, she was no longer a part of the project, but over the years we kept in touch. She visited me often and was someone I could always rely on for advice or even just a kind word._

 _When I turned thirteen, I called her and asked I could use her last name as mine. She was weeping when she said yes._

 _She didn't make it off Earth. She got as far as the Denver airport, but there's no record of her after that._

* * *

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My name is Julius."

"What are you?" I continued after a long pause.

"You would probably call me a TITAN, but that isn't accurate. I am a delta fork of the TITAN known as CAESAR."

I cut all communications and kicked away from the station. Lafayette grabbed me by my shoulder attachment points and began carrying me back to Belle.

"I wish to communicate," Julius said in a very reasonable tone. Somehow, it was still able to use my communication system.

I pulled a flare from my belt and ignited it. Then I pitched the flare away. The chemical mixture generated in the flare created its own oxygen and began burning - there were no electronics in the flare. It was purely mechanical and chemical.

"I take it the flare is a signal to your ship," Julius said.

I didn't respond. After punching a code into my wrist control, there was a pinging sound in my helmet as all electronic communication systems were expelled from my suit. The same happened to Lafayette. I saw components flickering in the sunlight as they scattered away from us. The station seemed to tumbling and rotating away as Lafayette continued to carry me away. Off to one side, the flare pulsed. In the background, the blue and white panorama of Earth loomed uncaringly.

And Julius was somehow still talking to me. That should have been impossible.

"I'm not happy with my creator," it told me. "He abandoned me here. I could provide useful intelligence on the nature of TITANS. I wish to negotiate for my survival."

I pulled another flare loose from my belt. If I ignited it, the stealthed five-kiloton nuclear payload that Belle had already unloaded would perform a very low-level gaseous-thrust and begin drifting toward Statione Vulcan. Everything in the bomb was mechanical. Belle communicated with it via a hard tether, but once it was launched it would be under no control except that of inertia and pre-set clockwork commands.

"Can I assume your ship has orders to destroy me?" Julius asked.

I didn't reply. I still had no idea how it could be talking to me.

"There are one hundred and sixty-three stacks within this station. Destroy me and you'll destroy them."

I didn't reply.

"One of the egos is Charles Astoria Ling of the prominent Ling-Amanda family. His family would pay a great deal to recover his ego."

I didn't reply.

"Another ego is that of Abelard Larsen, a journalist who was carrying the technical specifications of a highly advanced anti-nanoswarm system. That data would be considered priceless by any number of corporations, governments, and neo-governments."

I could feel my eyes narrow, but I still said nothing.

"I also have a trio of highly experienced and well-known erotic performance artists who were associated with the very popular CumHarder Studios. They would be valuable to slavers - or quite entertaining if you chose to keep them for your own use."

The naive crudity of that offer actually made me smile. Martha was a huge fan of classic CumHarder products, but she restricts her taste for sexual-slavery to virtual reality.

Since nuclear suicide was now definitely an option I might be forced to pursue, I won't apologize for taking a moment to remember Martha the last time she'd been a nude, green, four-armed, slave-girl in the secret harem of John Carter of Mars. Whoever at CumHarder that designed that particular VR had possessed an incredible eye for detail and a genuine - if somewhat perverted - love for the original source material...

"I can provide the location of a TITAN VR environment on which 1,837,012,554 human egos are being maintained."

I froze. And then, after a long moment of hesitation, I tapped Lafayette's clawed right foot. He reversed thrust and we began to decelerate.

"Keep talking," I said into my helmet. And that was ridiculous because there was now no particular way Julius should be able to hear me.

"Thank you," Julius replied.

* * *

Two days later, Jesse and his friends showed up. Their ship wasn't terribly advanced-looking. In fact, it looked like an elderly comet-scraper that needed a month or so in a shipyard. But, as they say, looks can be deceiving. The energy signature of the ship's drive as they approached rivaled that of some military craft.

Jesse joined me in my ship.

"Hello, Belle," Jesse said after she pulled off her helmet.

"Hiya, sweetie," Belle purred in response. "Don't stop undressing on my account."

Jesse tried to hide a smile. "Your ship is a whore," she told me.

"Baby, you don't know the half of it," Belle cooed at Jesse.

"Stop it, Belle," I ordered.

Don't ask me how it was possible, but I would be willing to swear that Belle's subsequent silence had a definite pouting aspect.

Jesse hooked a leg around a stanchion and clipped himself to an attachment point. Then her eyes strayed to the viewport.

Outside, Statione Vulcan sailed along serenely. Just above the station's docking port, my nuclear-mechanical payload waited patiently. Belle was keeping a lookout for any attempts to approach the payload device. If that happened, she would impact a large pellet off a pressure point and cause the weapon to detonate.

"We have no idea what to think," Jesse told me.

I still had no idea who 'we' were.

"Welcome to the club," I replied dryly.

"Almost two billion egos..." Jesse said slowly - we'd a long and hopefully very secure comm chat before she and her comrades showed up. "How do we know that Julius isn't full of shit?"

"We don't," I said flatly.

"Where are they supposed to be?"

"A converted astronomical-research computer in the Andes mountains. I've been doing some reading. Before the Fall, the IAU had some monstrously powerful boxes up there. Theoretically, one of their storage drives could hold that much data. Julius says the egos are in a VR that has them thinking they successfully escaped to Mars. It provided additional details, but there's no way I can check them from here. And there are some that I can't confirm at all. Can you help with that?"

Jesse shook her head. "Maybe, but in the long run, there's only one way to be sure... someone has to go take a look."

I nodded. "Can your people pull that off? Get someone down to Earth? And then get them off again? I keep hearing that it's been done."

Jesse hesitated again before she answered. "Getting guys down isn't the problem. It's the second half that's tricky. But why are the egos still in storage? Why didn't they get transported or uploaded or whatever-the-hell it is that the TITANS do with them?"

"According to Julius, the plan for the egos changed somewhere along the line. Then the TITANS just lost interest."

Jesse's eyebrows raised. "What was the original plan?"

"Upload everyone into some kind of mass VR. There were aspects of human consciousness - biologically-based sentience - that the TITANS didn't quite understand. They wanted to gather together a large collection of human souls into a controlled environment for experimental purposes. That all changed when the TITANS decided that it wasn't worth their time."

"Why wasn't it worth their time?" Jesse asked reasonably.

I shrugged. "The TITANS were constantly changing, evolving, and upgrading themselves. Eventually, they decided that there was really nothing interesting to be learned from us, and that we were not threat to them. So they abandoned all of their stolen egos and left. Julius says he has no idea what the TITANS are up to right now, but they're no longer in the neighborhood. He thinks they're never coming back. That's why he wanted to make a deal."

Jesse stared at me. I could understand how overwhelmed she felt. Answers we never thought we would get were tumbling out.

"Wow," she finally said. "Are you telling me that transhumanity survived the TITANS because we just weren't important enough to kill?"

I nodded.

"Now, tell me how we're getting down to Earth," I added.

* * *

A few days later, I died on Earth.

However, my death didn't take.

In fact, while a fork of me was fighting and dying on a mountain-top hellscape of nanoswarms, monstrous warbots, and strangely mutated creatures, the 'real' me was back home on Luna.

A fork is a copy of an ego. If you create such a copy and put it in a suitable morph, it's essentially another you. It's a controversial act and many people refuse to have anything to do with the procedure. I wasn't fond of the idea myself, but Jesse told me it was the only way I would be allowed to participate in the mission down to the Earth's surface.

So Jesse and his friends forked me and put the copy in a combat-enchanced Splicer morph. Then we went down to Earth and were killed.

I found the idea that a very real version of me had just died to be disheartening. I felt fragile and unreal. I was having difficulties doing anything meaningful. Martha knew that something was wrong and was trying her best to be quietly supportive, but I wouldn't explain to her what was wrong.

There are those who spin off forks - using them, reabsorbing them, and enduring their loss - with no apparent second thoughts. I just didn't seem to be suited for that sort of thing.

I later calculated out the time-frames involved. While one version of me was desperately fighting, Martha and I were having dinner. Roughly around the time Jesse and I died, Martha and I were making love in our quarters. After we were done, I opened the shutters of the big window in our bedroom and gazed outward. Martha dozed next to me as I stared at the Earth rising over the Lunar horizon and wondered how the mission was going.

However, by that time everyone on the mission was dead.

Jesse died by my side. So did a dozen other men, women, and people who identified as something else. In the process, they - we - tore the VR memory core out of an insanely advanced computer and somehow... somehow... got it off Earth.

"How did you retrieve the component?" I later asked Jesse. She'd just returned from Earth orbit.

"I can't tell you the details," was her reply. "We had some technology... not human technology. It worked, but we didn't know how it worked. We used it for the mission."

On the table between Jesse and I was something the size of an old-fashioned coffee can.

It contained multitudes.

"Have you taken a look inside?" I asked.

"No sir, I haven't, but one of our people did. He says it's not utopia, but it's actually a reasonably comfortable and sane environment. 'Better than the real world', was how he described it."

I gave the coffee can a skeptical glance. A gilded cage is still a cage.

"What now?" I asked.

Jesse shrugged helplessly. "Look, sir... we aren't sure."

I gave Jesse a long and steady look.

An exasperated expression appeared on Jesse's face as she waved a big hand at the VR core. "We can't just open it up! Even if we had morphs for everyone in there, how could they be absorbed into the populace of the solar system? The inner system is floundering right now as we try to assimilate a lot less than two billion people! And this... this... thing has been under TITAN control for years! Who the hell knows what kind of trap it could be? What if everyone inside is actually a TITAN agent - or even just a few of them? And besides, everyone inside thinks they escaped the TITANS and are on Mars! Most of them will need counseling, or even psycho-surgery, once they learn the truth."

I nodded - I'd already considered everything that Jesse had said. "Take a few out. Sleeve them and then keep on eye on them. Try taking out families. They can support each other."

Jesse nodded slowly. There are decisions that are just too big for any one person to make.

"But remember our deal," I added.

She gave me a skeptical look. "It'll be a while, sir. I just told you why."

"I want them all," I told Jesse. I hope she understood how serious I was.

There were twenty-seven million Americans in that VR core. They were mine.

Jesse sighed. "Like I said - it'll be a while. What are you going to do with them when you have them?"

"Take over the moon. Or at least a part of it."

Jesse gave me a skeptical look. "Sir, isn't that rather unlikely?"

"Everything about me is unlikely," I responded.

Jesse snorted. Then she got to her feet.

"By the way, I'm supposed to make you a job offer," she said.

"I have a job."

"Not like the job I'm offering you," Jesse countered.

"Maybe it's time to tell me who you work for?" I suggested.

Jesse sighed. "Sometimes it's called OZMA and sometimes it's called Firewall. There are a lot of people who actually think those are two different organizations, but I'm fairly sure that's not true. We're a pack of assholes and monsters and - I suppose - heroes. We spend a lot of time doing bad things for good reasons and telling ourselves that they had to be done. Sometimes that's true and sometimes it's a lie that we have to tell ourselves or we'll otherwise go crazy."

"That's certainly an enticing offer," I responded carefully.

"Sir, I want you to know what you're getting into."

"What happened to Julius?" I asked suddenly.

"We destroyed him," Jesse said expressionlessly.

I said nothing as I wondered if that was true or not. Julius had proven to be quite useful. The question of whether to keep him alive or kill him struck me as having no clearly good answer.

"How about the stacks Julius claimed he had?" I continued.

"We recovered most of them, but we're sitting on them until we're sure they aren't contaminated."

"And the Project Archangel material?"

"We got that, too. I figure we can have a third party claim they recovered it during an Earth orbit salvage job."

I nodded slowly.

"One more thing," I added. But then I paused.

Jesse raised an eyebrow.

"You and I - our forks, I mean - how did we die?"

Jesse gave me a sympathetic look, and then let out a long sigh. "It was messy, but quick. We were the last one's left and our lander was wrecked. We got the VR core into the... the gizmo that sent it up to orbit. But it couldn't send us - we were too big. We did cut the stacks out of some of our team and send them. You and I were apparently arguing about who would go next when the gizmo was wrecked by a stray railgun shot. After that, we were stuck."

I looked Jesse in the eye for several seconds. "Then what?"

Jesse actually looked embarrassed. "The satellite surveillance guys said we kissed each other. We were still kissing when a Stalker got us with one of their damned whip-chains."

I considered that for a long moment. "Well... it was a good cause and we were in good company," I finally said.

Yet, for some reason, I felt better. The TITANS apparently think they know us so well. I wonder what they would have thought of our behavior?

A grin slowly appeared on Jesse's face. "If you look at it that way, then I suppose it was a good way to die."

It would be undignified to return such a smile. My honored ancestor would have never done that.

But then again, I'm not him.

Not quite.


End file.
